This time last year, when America's social divisions neatly cleaved along the lines of the 99 percent and 1 percent, it was easy to know where one stood. Were you a captain of industry, heavy-hitting financier, or someone else? The answer to this easy question put you in one of the two categories. Leave it to Mitt Romney, who's run a very muddled presidential campaign, to confuse matters. In his now-infamous comments at a fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla., he split the country into 53 percent and 47 percent of its population. The latter, according to Romney, doesn't pay income taxes, is supported by government aid and would never vote for him because they want to stay tethered to their subsidies, rather than advance in the world. The former category is everyone else.
But that 47 percent, something of a favorite number of conservative think tanks, is more complicated than Romney suggests. Does it include the working poor who pay federal and state (and in some instances, local) payroll taxes but not income taxes because of the earned income tax credit, a policy that has been supported and expanded by Republican administrations dating to President Ford's, as a way to encourage work? And does it include elderly households who paid income taxes throughout their working lives but don't any longer now that the majority of their small income comes via Social Security? The important shades of this classification have been extensively explained by many pundits ever since Romney's comments were divulged last week. Unfortunately for Romney, the world isn't split into black and white, as George W. Bush also liked to think, to his detriment. Not only was Romney's comment wrong, but it also drastically misunderstood who his supporters are. Plenty of them are in this category too.
More profoundly, that 53 percent of income taxpayers is tied to government largesse too. There are the wildly popular tax deductions for mortgage interest payments and health care premiums, the first of which particularly favors the wealthy because they own larger, more expensive homes with larger mortgages; the U.S. defense budget that supports a very large industry; local property tax breaks that are given to businesses so they can expand their buildings; and so on, without even getting into policy matters such as the lower tax rate on capital gains, which favors the most wealthy because they're much more likely to earn income via investments than salaries. For a candidate who claims to love discussing the outsized role of government in contemporary American lives, Romney seems quite bashful about addressing how all levels of government are also quite interested in supporting that 53 percent. In fact, I might be one of the 53 percent who's least reliant on the federal government -- I'm young, I don't have kids, I rent. But then, I work in affordable housing, so my job relies on federal tax credits and subsidized housing loans. Never mind.
But that 47 percent, something of a favorite number of conservative think tanks, is more complicated than Romney suggests. Does it include the working poor who pay federal and state (and in some instances, local) payroll taxes but not income taxes because of the earned income tax credit, a policy that has been supported and expanded by Republican administrations dating to President Ford's, as a way to encourage work? And does it include elderly households who paid income taxes throughout their working lives but don't any longer now that the majority of their small income comes via Social Security? The important shades of this classification have been extensively explained by many pundits ever since Romney's comments were divulged last week. Unfortunately for Romney, the world isn't split into black and white, as George W. Bush also liked to think, to his detriment. Not only was Romney's comment wrong, but it also drastically misunderstood who his supporters are. Plenty of them are in this category too.
More profoundly, that 53 percent of income taxpayers is tied to government largesse too. There are the wildly popular tax deductions for mortgage interest payments and health care premiums, the first of which particularly favors the wealthy because they own larger, more expensive homes with larger mortgages; the U.S. defense budget that supports a very large industry; local property tax breaks that are given to businesses so they can expand their buildings; and so on, without even getting into policy matters such as the lower tax rate on capital gains, which favors the most wealthy because they're much more likely to earn income via investments than salaries. For a candidate who claims to love discussing the outsized role of government in contemporary American lives, Romney seems quite bashful about addressing how all levels of government are also quite interested in supporting that 53 percent. In fact, I might be one of the 53 percent who's least reliant on the federal government -- I'm young, I don't have kids, I rent. But then, I work in affordable housing, so my job relies on federal tax credits and subsidized housing loans. Never mind.
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